SC Appoints Anti-Immigrant Immigrant

I kept seeing headlines about South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley appointing a white supremacist to a steering committee for the state, but the details are actually even weirder than that. The guy is an anti-immigration neo-confederate — and he is himself a Cuban immigrant.

And on that list is one “Republican leader” and Tea Party activist named Roan Garcia-Quintana of Greenville.

The name won’t ring many bells outside of the South Carolina political world. But he’s better known in white nationalist, anti-immigrant and neo-Confederate circles…

Garcia-Quintana is also a rabid nativist, even though he’s a naturalized citizen who was born in Havana. He’s executive director of the anti-immigrant group Americans Have Had Enough, based in Mauldin, S.C., where he lives. At the 2008 CCC conference held in Sheffield, Ala., Garcia-Quintana referred to Latino immigration as an “illegal alien invasion.”…

Although Cuban by birth, Garcia-Quintana does not consider himself Latino. His ancestors, he says, were Spaniards and this makes him white. He refers to himself as “Havana born, Savannah raised” and as a “Confederate Cuban.”

So he’s a racist, as well as an idiot. I hope nobody tells him anything about the moorish genome and its effect on spanish bloodlines* He’s probably as pureblooded as any other mutt human…

There is a fair bit of weird racism in the hispanic community. I was in Mexico at a big dinner hosted by a guy who proceeded to lecture me (wine was involved) about how he was descended from pure spanish blood that hadn’t intermixed with the south american riffraff. It was bizzare. I, as I usually do, replied that I’m riffraff. ;)** Although I did think that as a self-styled spaniard talking to a self-styled scandinavian, we had 2 examples of “rape, loot, pillage & burn” staring at eachother.

Another way of looking at the “I’m spanish, not hispanic” claim is that it amounts to saying “I’m from the side that committed genocide. not the other side.” Well, obviously that’s something to hold your head up about.

(* not that I believe any of that shit for a second)

(** norwegian/irish)

Scr… Archivist

Maybe he’s from a parallel universe where the C.S.A. took over Cuba in 1898. Remember the Texas!

matty1

I thought Latino=Hispanic=Spanish speaking, not that it denotes a racial group as such. Maybe he meant he isn’t mestizo but then we’d have to get into the whole mess of categories colonial Spain invented.

freemage

Marcus: Norwegian/Scots/German here, so I hear where you’re coming from. I don’t think any part of my family tree doesn’t end up with some guy who would come over a hill, see a town, and think, “That’s a nice place for a bonfire.”

raven

Although Cuban by birth, Garcia-Quintana does not consider himself Latino. His ancestors, he says, were Spaniards and this makes him white. He refers to himself as “Havana born, Savannah raised” and as a “Confederate Cuban.”

That can happen. It happens a lot.

One of my colleagues was a Cuban born with a Spanish last name. He was also blond haired and blue eyed.

You see it in Mexico too. The upper classes didn’t mix with the Indians at all and you see a few very European looking rich people whose families have been there for centuries.

Pierce R. Butler

According to the linked article, Haley appointed Garcia-Quintana to a board for her re-election campaign, not “a steering committee for the state”.

Also from that article:

If Garcia-Quintana had his way, immigrants would be arrested if they were caught driving without a license and would languish in jail until they could be deported. Their cars would be impounded if they were caught driving without insurance. Garcia-Quintana would also work to make English the official language of South Carolina. According to his “Quintana for SC Senate” website in 2008, “What we want to accomplish is to STOP the enticements for illegal aliens. To do that we must remove the license to operate a business from anyone who continually hires illegal aliens and make it unpleasant for illegals to live here in South Carolina.”

Pierce R. Butler

Why don’t we all chip in to buy Garcia-Quintana a one-way ticket to Maricopa County, Arizona?

Synfandel

Pierce R. Butler for the win!

zekehoskin

I have proof that I can’t discuss this kind of thing usefully: two bunches of in-laws were arguing whether it was better to be Greek or Icelandic, and I asked what difference it made, the important thing was they weren’t Scottish, and they took me seriously.

laurentweppe

His ancestors, he says, were Spaniards and this makes him white

But what made him an idiot?

Too many incestuous mariages among his blue-blooded ancestors

Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden

@ Scr… Archivist

Remember the Texas.

Wouldn’t that be “Remember the Virginia” as the the state both northernmost and on the Atlantic?

Ah, Virginia, land of the Virgins.

Or wait, isn’t the land of the Virgins called “the Vatican”?

Tsu Dho Nimh

I’m not surprised. There is a very strong racist and classist tradition in Cuba, Mexico and the rest of Latin America, going all the way back to the early days of the Conquista.

The Spaniards refused to recognize children born to the Spanish families they sent over to govern as true Spaniards, high status “Peninsulares”, which led to the practice of pregnant Spanish women of high class or wealth being shipped back to Spain so they could deliver a true Spanish heir on Spanish soil. It also led to a disaffected class of Spaniards, “los criollos”, descended from families who were not rich enough to be able to ship their wives back for the birth.

In any Latin American country, the words “de buena aparencia” (of good appearance) in a help wanted ad is a code for “no meztizos or blacks need apply, we want fair-skinned ones”.

And they have clubs where only those of “pure European ancestry” can join or be invited as a guest. I was invited to dine at one, and cheerfully informed the wannabee host that I couldn’t accept because I was a “mestizo” on my father’s side and legally black in several states because of a maternal ancestor. He was quite puzzled that I would admit it.

Pretty blond Scandinavian ladies with upturned noses and perky breastessess can’t be “illegal” in the same sense as FILTHY, DARKISH day laborers–true story.

dan4

@21: What a stupid comment.

Thumper; Atheist mate

What the… I don’t even… what?

I’d assumed this was a case of “Well I’m here already, fuck everyone else”… but a Cuban white-supremacist? What?

laurentweppe

Is it racist to want to keep your own heritage pure?”

The far-right: turning incestuous fetiches into ideology since the dawn of civilization

Thumper; Atheist mate

Says him ““Is it racist to be proud of your own heritage?” Garcia-Quintana asked. “Is it racist to want to keep your own heritage pure?”

Garcy, baby, it’s that second one people have a problem with.

On a side-note related to Marcus Ranum et al’s, I’m English and was aware I had both Anglo-Saxon and Norman blood, but Dad has been researching the family tree and it turns out I also have Scottish, Irish, Danish and Indian (as in the sub-continent, not Native American) anscestry. I’m quite proud of this mixed heritage. And I can also use it to back up my go-to anti-racist argument even further: “Everyone in Britain is an immigrant, except the Welsh and the Cornish”. Winds Anglo-Saxon supremacists right up, not least because it also proves that they know nothing of the history of the British isles, despite being a “patriot”.

To be fair, Thumper, the Welsh and Cornish are immigrants too – they just represent the descendents of the first wave of Indo-European people to inhabit Britain, rather than the Romans, Anglo-Saxons or Normans who represent later waves, but we can still count the pre-Celtic peoples (who built the really ancient stuff like Stonehenge) among our ancestors.

kermit.

As a pure Jute-Saxon-Angle-Pict-Celt-Teuton-Viking-Hun-Moor-Semitic-Neanderthal, I have told my daughter that she will not even look at a homo floresiensis, let alone bring him home to “meet the ‘rents”. Damn tricksy hobbits, they are, and not to be trusted.